


how i wonder what you are

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Birthdays, Comfort, F/M, Post-Canon, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29641482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: 'He materialises seemingly out of nowhere, silently replacing the stars in front of her, but she’s hardly surprised. They’ve become rather good at finding one another over the years. She waits for questions, for him to voice what’s been on his face all day, but instead he simply drops something on her stomach and says, “you’re old enough to know that you shouldn’t be out here without a jacket.”'Jemma's first birthday back home. It's a little different but she still has her family, and she still has the stars.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63





	how i wonder what you are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LibbyWeasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibbyWeasley/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Libby!! You are without a doubt one of the absolutely loveliest beans in the world and you deserve such lovely things! I hope you're having a wonderful day!! This fandom wouldn't be the same without you <3
> 
> This is just a comforting moment post-series on Jemma's first birthday back. It's not angsty, I promise! Just a lot of love. I did try to get my series maths correct but if the numbers are out I really apologise. 
> 
> A big big thank you to Martina for being her wonderful self as always, but also for proofreading this for me and making sure I hadn't made a mess. Love you lots!
> 
> Title and little bit at the beginning are from 'twinkle twinkle little star'. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

_ Then the traveller in the dark,  _

_ Thanks you for your tiny spark, _

_ He could not see which way to go, _

_ If you did not twinkle so. _

_ ~ _

He finds her lying on her back in the middle of the grass, looking up at the night sky.

They are relatively untroubled by light pollution this far out from the main city, and if she were so inclined, she could trace out the constellations she has known since she was a little girl, her finger dancing across the sky. It used to be a habit for her when she was younger but like so many other things over the years it’s become lost, and she thinks it might break her heart to find it again.

He materialises seemingly out of nowhere, silently replacing the stars in front of her, but she’s hardly surprised. They’ve become rather good at finding one another over the years. She waits for questions, for him to voice what’s been on his face all day, but instead he simply drops something on her stomach and says, “you’re old enough to know that you shouldn’t be out here without a jacket.”

It’s not her jacket he has brought her, however. It’s his hoodie. A new one, only a few months old, but already well-loved by him, and her by extension. She slips it on with a sigh and he takes the opportunity to lie down beside her.

“I wasn’t cold,” she says, but in the warmth of his hoodie she realises that she was, a little bit.

“Liar.” Before she even turns to look at him she knows that he’ll be grinning, and there’s a small satisfaction when she turns out to be right. He takes the hand closest to him. “Just as I thought. Freezing.”

“Ugh, Fitz,” she half-laughs. “My hands are always cold.”

“I know, I know, but the rest of you looked cold, too. Can’t have the birthday girl getting ill on her big day.”

She’s somehow forgotten that it’s still her birthday, that the day hadn’t ended before she slipped out here after putting Alya down for the night. But at the same time she hasn’t forgotten at all. This is why she’s out here, after all.

“Is Alya-”

“Out for the count,” Fitz confirms, holding up his wrist. On his watch face their daughter sleeps surrounded by stars projecting from her nightlight. Remembering how only a few short months ago did she sleep under the real thing, Jemma has to bite her lip and look away.

“Hey,” Fitz says softly, and his thumb begins to rub soft arches on the skin of the hand joined to his. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Fitz.” She shakes her head, managing a weak smile. “It’s nothing.”

He smiles too, softer than anything she can imagine. “Liar. You’ve never been very good at it, Jemma.”

“It’s n-”

“Don’t say that it’s nothing,” he interrupts. “Come on, you’ve had that look on your face all day.”

“I had a lovely day,” she assures him, because she has. “I really did.”

“I know you did.” His eyes are shining with stars of their own. His thumb is still rubbing circles on her hand. “But what is it?”

It’s something hard to define, is what it is, but she knows she has to try. Fitz is looking at her curiously, as though he wants to understand but can’t, not unless she tells him. After all the years and adventures they’ve had together, they understand each other inside and out. Even their hearts have an understanding, and she’s sure that they regularly beat in synchronisation. If one strays, the other reminds it of its rightful rhythm. It is the way they have always worked after all.

But now Fitz is looking at her as though he’s beating as they always have, but he’s doing it all alone, and try as he might he can’t seem to pull her back in to what always should be. The evidence of it has been on his face all day and as such he’s been fixing her with curious side-looks ever since he and Alya awoke her this morning with breakfast in bed.

Well, Alya had woken her first with her giggles that she was doing a poor job of concealing, even as Fitz had desperately tried with his pleas of  _ it’s supposed to be a surprise, monkey. Not going to be much of one when she hears you coming from a mile off.  _ And it hadn’t been a surprise, but it had been lovely, and the look on Alya’s face when Jemma had ‘awakened’ right as Alya threw herself at her mother had been worth the pretence.

There had been pancakes shaped like wobbly stars and homemade cards and flowers that Alya had declared the ‘loveliest smelling’. There had been hugs and kisses and dancing in their half-finished kitchen to all of the songs they had missed. They’ve been to the park and they’ve been swimming and they’ve had a most ordinary wonderful day the way all of their ordinary days are now. There had been nothing else she’d wanted other than another one of those, sure that she could have them until she lived to be one-hundred and even then still never have enough.

So it’s been a lovely day, and it has been everything it should’ve, but she’s been unable to ignore this feeling in the back of her heart and Fitz has been unable to ignore it either and so it’s gone on. Maybe they are still beating together, really; it’s just an imperfect synchronisation, rather than the timely one they’re used to.

Jemma swallows and turns from Fitz back up to the stars. They’re so small from all the way down here. So small and so very far away. Who would believe they lived among them for four years? If she hadn’t, would she believe it herself?

“Can you believe we lived up there once?” She says to Fitz now. “That we had a daughter? That we made a home?”

“No,” he chuckles disbelievingly. She can’t see him but she can imagine the look on his face. “No, I still can’t. Most days it feels like a dream.”

“It’s like we’ve blinked, isn’t it? One day we were us, as we’ve always been, and the next… the next we were us as we are now. And in the same blink it’s as though we’ve always been us as we are now. I feel as though I’ve never been anyone different.”

“I know,” Fitz says, but his voice is careful. “It’s like it always should’ve been this way. Anything else…”

He trails off, but they both know. Anything else is unthinkable.

They’re silent for a moment, holding hands on the grass in a way reminiscent of their Academy days, when they had the stars and they had each other and everything was fine. The memory of it, of how normal their lives were really, yet how extraordinary it had all seemed, makes her smile. God, they really were children.

“I thought I’d be ready for coming back,” she says eventually, still looking up. “I mean we planned for it for so long, didn’t we? We talked about it all the time. I half-expected we would step off the plane and have a whole life here waiting for us, and it would be like we just had to pick up where we left off. But it’s not like that.”

“No,” Fitz agrees softly. “We have to build it.” He turns to her, then, and so she turns to him. His eyes are young, hopeful. He looks like he did back then and he squeezes her hand. “But we are, Jemma. We’re getting there.”

“I know we are,” she says and smiles because she does.

Their forever home is half-finished with paint and plaster everywhere and Alya still doesn’t really understand why the world slows down when it’s dark outside – still doesn’t really understand the concept of an  _ outside  _ – and they are trying to insert themselves back into a world that they haven’t properly inhabited for so long, longer than before they ever went to space, but they’re getting there. This life is being built and they can make it however they want it to be. The freedom to do so has almost been overwhelming at times but they’re getting there. That’s what she needs to remember. They’re getting there.

“I thought it would have been you,” she sighs. “I thought it would have been you that felt like his.”

Fitz huffs a breathy laugh that escapes into the night air. “Yeah,” he says, “so did I.”

They are imperfect versions of who they should be, she thinks. Her lab space always had to be pristine but more often than not it’s Fitz picking her socks up from the bedroom floor. Fitz has always been a late-riser but yet he is almost unbearably obsessive about ensuring they are early to appointments. They are unable to be pressed into moulds, to fit into what others want them to be. They have been defying expectations from the start. It’s just who they are.

“It’s so strange, Fitz.” Jemma eyes the stars again as she talks. A dark canvas with paintbrush splatters of light. Her father would call that romantic nonsense.  _ It’s the sky, Jemma. It doesn’t need a metaphor. It is what it is on its own.  _ She’s always found a little magic in the romance of it, though (even though she would have never admitted to it), but now she doesn’t need it. She found her own home in the stars. No writer could ever hope to compare with that.

“What’s strange, Jemma?”

“This birthday… I didn’t even realise it until just now. This birthday is the first one where I’ve felt safe.”

“Oh,  _ Jemma. _ ”

She knows that if she looks at him he’ll have that soft face of his on, the one that says his heart aches for her, and so she doesn’t turn her head. Some things are just easier to tell the stars.

“Even last year I was just worrying all of the time. Worrying about us, about Alya, about if we’d ever make it to here. And now we have, Fitz, and we’re alright and I’m safe, I  _ feel s _ afe, and I don’t know what to do about it. It feels… wrong.”

She takes a deep breath, watches as her paintbrush splatters of light grow blurry in her eyes.

“I didn’t think I’d miss it. I mean what kind of life is that to miss?” She chuckles sadly. “But I do, Fitz, I really do.”

She expects Fitz to laugh, to call her ridiculous, because it is ridiculous, she fully accepts that. And it’s not that she wants to go back there, not really, but it’s just at least she knew where she stood. Her family were always within arm’s reach, and no matter how worried she was, how fretful she was of the future, they were right there, in reach of her fingertips that she could press to their warm skin and convince herself that everything was going to be alright.

But Fitz doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t call her ridiculous. Instead he just holds onto her like he’s never going to let her go again and says, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

She turns to him quizzically. “You do?” Ever since they’ve been back he’s been bursting with enthusiasm. He’s happier than he’s been in a long time, and it’s like one morning those years that were etched into his skin, around his eyes and mouth, were just smoothed away.

“Yeah.” He nods up to the sky. “Up there, well it was simple, wasn’t it?”

She rolls her eyes and says pointedly, “We were building a time machine, Fitz.”

“Alright, yeah,” he smiles, “but that's simple for us, isn’t it? And it was just that. Just us.”

“Just us,” she agrees. Then, softer, sadder. “It’s never going to be just us again.”

“Nah, or not like that anyway. But we were lucky to get the time we did, isn’t that what you said? Loads of people don’t get the time that we had.”

“Loads of people don’t have to try and save the world from Chronicoms, Fitz.”

“ _ Alright _ , but you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” She thinks,  _ I always know what you mean. We’re the same, you and I.  _ She blows out a breath up to the stars. “Oh, I just feel so ridiculous. It’s my birthday, and I have everything I ever wanted, and all I can think about is how much easier it was when we were building a time machine whilst trying to raise our daughter in a Zephyr ship in space.”

Her mother had phoned her earlier to wish her a happy birthday, and all she could think of was  _ that’s not how old I am.  _ Her mother had been chirpy in her ear –  _ oh thirty-two years old, love. It feels just like yesterday to me –  _ but Jemma had been unable to hear past that number.  _ Thirty-two.  _ She’s not thirty-two. She’s thirty-six. Isn’t she? Both are right and both are wrong and she supposes it doesn’t matter, not really. She could forget about it herself but she can’t deny Alya. She’ll be four years old soon. Her birthday is ten days after her mother’s.

Fitz, to her non-surprise, just laughs. She narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just – do you remember what I said to you when Alya was born?”

He’d said a lot of things, she thinks. Those seventeen hours are a blur, if she’s honest. She remembers the pain and she remembers the fear perched on her chest like a vulture. She remembers thinking about the creation of the universe, how everything that there ever was or will be was born from something smaller than an atom. And yes, now she thinks, she knows what he’s getting at. Two hearts beating in the same rhythm after all.

“Yes,” she laughs, too. “You said that we were mental.”

“Absolutely bloody mental,” he confirms, accent thicker back in his native land. The words sound better like this. He gives her an impossibly soft smile. “We’re not going to feel the way we should about things. Doubt we ever will, to be honest. It’s just part of the deal.”

How Fitz got to be so very wise is beyond her. Just yesterday it seems she was calming his panicked mind in his dorm room, and now he’s here, holding her hands under the stars and proving to her that, despite everything, they really are going to be okay.

“You didn’t have a crisis on your birthday,” she points out, almost ruefully.

“I didn’t have time to. S _ omeone  _ thought it would be a good idea to give Alya golden syrup on her breakfast pancakes and she was bouncing off the walls all day.”

“Fitz, that  _ ‘someone’  _ was you.”

“Well, yeah, but I learned from my mistakes this time around.”

“Ah, so you’re the one that caused this then, are you?”

“Blame me if you like,” he shrugs, eyes open and easy. There was once upon a time they wouldn’t have been so with words like that. What a difference a few short months has made. “But it’s not a crisis, Jemma. You’re just getting there, that’s all.”

Their hands are still joined, the small distance between them not as great as she had feared, and so it takes her barely five seconds to tuck herself in at Fitz’s side, rest her head over his heart the way she has been doing for years. She has trouble falling asleep any other way.

“I don’t want to be anywhere else, Fitz,” she whispers as his arms come around her, holding her to him. It’s more habit than fear now, but they can’t forget the way it once was. “I really don’t want anything else other than what we have now.”

“You’re allowed to miss it, Jemma,” he says into her hair. “It was your whole life, too.”

“I know, but I love this life, Fitz. I really do.”

She feels the warmth of his lips against her scalp, and she presses her cheek even closer to his chest, almost as though she could bury herself in there. There’s no place she feels safer than with him.

“Hey,” Fitz whispers against her skin. “I’ve got a present for you.”

She cranes her neck to look up at him. “Fitz,” she admonishes gently. “We agreed-”

“I know, I know,” he says, which means that he knows but that he’d ignored it completely. They’d agreed that their money was for renovating the house and for Alya, and that any thoughts towards gifts were to be redirected to those things. Jemma had received flowers and chocolates and cards this morning but that was all she had expected and wanted. There wasn’t supposed to be anything else.

“I didn’t get you anything else for your birthday.”

He shakes his head. “Didn’t need anything else.”

“Well neither do I.”

“Yes,” he says, softly but pointedly. “You do.”

_ You’ve already given me everything,  _ she wants to say, thinking of Alya sleeping soundly, thinking of the heart beating underneath her cheek.  _ Life, heart and home. _

“It’s nothing big,” he says when she doesn’t say anything, and one arm lets go of her to reach down beside him. He hands her a small scroll, tied with a blue ribbon that exactly matches his eyes. “Just thought you might like it.” When she doesn’t take it he taps her hand with it. “Go on.”

She does, then, and moves a little in order to untie the ribbon with both hands. Fitz shines the torch from his wristwatch in order for her to read what’s written on the unravelled scroll. When she has, she turns to him with a raised eyebrow, but cannot help the smile in her voice.

“You named a star after me?”

Fitz looks almost sheepish and she is explicably reminded of him at sixteen years old, achingly shy. “Yeah.”

“Fitz…” she breathes, feeling tears prick in her eyes. She cannot finish.

“I know it’s silly and trite and-”

“No,” she interrupts. “It’s not. Not to me.”

“I just thought,” he laughs a little breathily, like the way another-him once did when he told her he had been thinking of what to say before taking her hand and telling her that words didn’t really seem enough, “that I can’t give you them back, Jemma, not the way you had them anyway. But I can give you this. It’s yours. Forever.”

_ I can’t give you back the time that you’ve missed, but I can give you me. Now and forever.  _ Does he know what he’s saying? The stars don’t belong to people but maybe they belong to them. After everything they’ve been through, haven’t they earned the stars?

“Oh,  _ Fitz. _ ” is all that she’s able to say and feels her chin wobble but it’s not from longing and it’s not from fear. It’s not from anything else except the sheer love she feels, the sheer joy at her luck that the universe had found the two of them all those years ago and thought  _ yes, these two don’t belong anywhere else except than with each other. _

It's something Fitz would think, with his insistence that the universe has sentience. It’s something that he would most likely disagree with, too, that they’re lucky, that they have been lucky all this time. He would think about how many times they’ve lost each other, but she likes to think about all the luck that’s meant they’ve found their way back.

It must be something cosmic. They’ve fought Hydra and aliens and robots. They’ve been separated by their minds, by space, by time. They started their family in the stars, years and space away from everyone and everything they’d ever known. They have Alya. It must be something divine, something completely beyond their ken that they’ve made it here, with Fitz, after everything, gifting to her something that’s so normal, so unbefitting of their lives among the wonders of the universe. And that makes it the most perfect gift of all.

“Do you like it?” He asks, and he looks so hopeful, so wonderful, and she can’t help but kiss him.

“Yes,” she whispers against his lips. “I love it.” She thinks  _ I love you. _

“I’m glad,” he whispers back. He means  _ I love you, too. _

And then she settles her head back on his chest, her cheek over his heart, her own star clutched in her hand. There’s nowhere else she’d rather be than here. She looks up to the night sky once again, mouths a silent  _ thank you  _ to the universe, just in case Fitz is right after all.

The stars blink down their approval and keep shining on. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Libby!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading - I hope you enjoyed it! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day and are managing to stay safe and well in this crazy world!


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